Salon Hit Piece Implies Truth Seeking Is A Mental Illness

An advice columnist for the influential left leaning website Salon.com has launched a scathing attack on Alex Jones in response to a letter from a reader who says his 17 year old nephew has been “sucked into the Internet conspiracy black hole” created by Jones.

Salon’s Cary Tennis refers to Jones as a “cultish fear-monger” and advises the reader named “Buck” that his nephew’s visits to Jones’ websites may be an indication that he is mentally disturbed.

Tennis initially reels off the usual psychobabble about people wanting to find simple explanations for complex things, needing to feel like there is a vast conspiracy to get them, and wanting to feel like they are privy to exclusive information that the masses are not aware of.

YAWN.

Towards the end of his response, however, he makes the following remarks:

I do not want to conclude without making explicit that if he has dyslexia or some kind of attention-deficit disorder, those are things that should be diagnosed and treated on their own. If his mother’s coddling has prevented him from facing up to these possible problems, that could be adding to his anxiety. So I would definitely, in addition to the camping trip, or wilderness expedition, do what you can to bring to light any organic, diagnosable and treatable conditions he may have. Treating them will not only improve his abilities but give him some confidence that obstacles can be overcome and differences in ability can be compensated for.

Labeling as mentally disturbed anyone who is skeptical or open to the possibility that conspiracies may have a basis in reality is a move we have witnessed before.

Last month Psychology Today published a piece with the exact same implications. Writer John Gartner made Alex Jones the centerpiece of a story in which he attempted to define distrust of authorities and alternative explanations for the “official story” put out by governments and their corporate media arms as mental illness.

In our previous article we pointed out that there is a long history of those very forms of authority designating dissenting explanation as a psychological illness as a means to stamp it out along with all forms of critical thinking.

Salon’s Cary Tennis got the gig as the website’s “agony uncle” advice columnist, by his own admission, mainly due to a troubled past. He occasionally makes reference to the fact that he is a recovering alcoholic and that these challenges in his own life have led him to find a connection with others who are in trouble.

I could respond by reeling off a parade of pseudo-psychological clap trap about Tennis wanting to believe other people are troubled because it exorcises his own demons blah blah blah, but instead I will just state that Tennis’ attempt to play at being Sigmund Freud is tired and weak.

Free thinking people are flocking to Alex Jones’ websites not because they are “looking for a system that explains why things are fucked up”, but because they have been consistently lied to by a cabal calling itself government operating through both political parties. They are distressed that elites continue to wage wars in their names, continue to hand over the fruits of their labor to offshore banks and corporations, and continue to destroy their freedoms and lower their standard of living.

Hacks like Tennis appear ludicrous when they accuse those free thinkers of being out of touch with their own world when the reality of the situation is the exact opposite.

Pick up a newspaper Mr Tennis, look around you. Who is engaging in mental gymnastics? Is it Alex Jones, who is gravely concerned about an engineered decline of society, or is it you with your accusations that he and his readers may be clinically insane for suggesting such a thing even exists?

With consideration, however, it is my guess is that Tennis is not engaging in any kind of cognitive dissonance, but that he is just plain lazy. My guess is that Tennis spent less than five minutes evaluating Alex Jones, his standpoint and the material he has produced over the course of the last fifteen years, before tapping away a standard hack response at his keyboard.

The mentally unstable conspiracy theorist in me has another suggestion, however. Indulge me if you will.

The letter also compares the 17 year old nephew to “young men in 1930s Germany… when told that they were part of a master race being manipulated by the international Jewish conspiracy”, thus ridiculously and callously implying that Alex Jones is akin to Hitler.

In what seems to be a pre-determined anticipation of our response to the attack piece, the letter also carefully points out that the young impressionable mind of the teenager interprets any any criticism of Jones as “a product of the nefarious dark forces out to discredit the only man intelligent enough and courageous enough to tell the truth.”

Call me a paranoid conspiracy theorist, but the letter has all the hallmarks of a carefully concocted smear piece.

Outlets such as Salon, Media Matters, The Daily Kos and Think Progress have begun attacking Alex Jones precisely because they see his truly individual status, ultimate bipartisanship and real grassroots popularity as a threat to their misconceived “new media” empire.

If “Buck” is a real person he really has done his homework in following the Soros directed attack program to a tee in his letter.

Of course, all that is in my attention-deficit disorder riddled mind. Perhaps I need to take Mr Tennis’ advice and get out into the wilderness some more.

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Addendum: I cannot let slip one more rather cheap shot from the Salon piece which comes in the form of criticizing Alex Jones based on advertisements on his websites. Tennis derides our acceptance of “comic book” style ads for “Powerful Herbal Medicines”, while directly opposite his comments, and plastered all over his article for that matter, are a comic book like ads for “The antioxidant superpower” of 100% natural pomegranate juice, instantly rendering his point hypocritical in addition to it’s permanent irrelevance.